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Show review 2013: Best show ever!

This year's Expo proved a great success, with an even bigger and better selection of the latest developments and manufacturing technologies on show at Tire Technology Expo 2013

Compiled by Graham Heeps

With 2,000 visitors through the door from 80 countries, plus record numbers of exhibitors, course participants and conference delegates, Tire Technology Expo 2013 was the best show yet!

“The conference brings lots of good R&D people into the show, but we also see the purchasers here,” said exhibitor, Seyfullah Bozkurt, managing director of Uzer Makina, which produced more curing presses than ever before in 2012. “They can see all the suppliers in a single place, so it’s important for us to be here.”

From Cabot Corporation’s latest high-performing reinforcement material, to VMI’s Cortexx user interface for tire machinery, to Crisplant’s brand-new, automated handling system for green tires, exhibitors used the show to present brand-new innovations to the tire design and manufacturing community.

The quest for environmentally friendlier solutions throughout the tire’s lifecycle was a major theme of both the exhibition and the conference, whether in the form of a Tire Technology International award for Bridgestone’s low-carbon development center, the mass-saving new rayon cord presented by Cordenka, or the cutting-edge tire recycling technologies from the likes of Pyrolyx and HungaroJet.

“We had organized in advance some meetings at the show with testing partners, but we had at least the same number of new enquiries as well, not just from Europe, but also Korea and the Middle East,” said HungaroJet’s COO, György Moldován.

As ever with Tire Technology Expo, the exhibition was only part of the attraction. Some 430 conference delegates – another record ­– enjoyed a wide-ranging program of presentations and panel discussions featuring 120 expert speakers. One of them was Dr Arup Saha Deuri, general manager, R&D at Balkrishna Tires in India, who commented: “I had an excellent response to my conference presentation. The attendance was good and I fielded lots of questions and enquiries afterwards.”

The short courses too, were more popular than ever, one example being the explosion of interest in the Basic Rubber Compounding Course, which attracted twice as many participants as in 2012. And on the evening of the show’s middle day, 550 exhibitors, delegates and their guests took advantage of the superb networking opportunity presented by the Awards Gala Dinner.

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